The tl;dr summary is that the Ambit2 is a lot of watch for the money, and the tremendous battery life is a huge plus for ultra runners. But...for older runners with aging eyes like me, the watch is very difficult to read while running. The main field is oversized with the 2 subfields are just too tiny. When racing I am in the habit of glancing down to check my current pace, overall time, and distance, along with lap splits as I finish miles, and I can only see one of these at a time, so this will not be my marathon or shorter race watch. I'm pretty disappointed in this.
A week or two ago my Garmin 610 froze and seemingly couldn't be reset. I tried everything for a day, and having been frustrated with something going wrong on every Garmin I've owned within about 2 years, I decided it was time to switch to the Suunto Ambit. My Garmin actually recovered a day after I ordered a new watch online, but I don't know how much I can trust it anymore, so I'm not sending back the new watch.
I went with the Ambit2 since it has a better battery life than the 2r or 2s for not much more money, and I didn't feel I needed to pay extra for the bluetooth functions in the Ambit3. Deals come and go, so the price I paid will be meaningless before too long, but I got it for $189 (free shipping) through Dexclusive.com. I think I paid $350 for my Garmin 610 and it's replacement, the improved 620, costs as much.
For the best reviews, go to DC Rainmaker's website. This guy tries just about every watch on the market and I've found his reviews to be fair, thorough, and as far as I can tell, unbiased. You should not buy a GPS watch without checking out his reviews. I'm not trying to replace or improve on his review, but rather adding my own perspective.
The Ambit2 is noticeably larger and heavier than the Garmin 610. 72g to 89g due in part to more features, like an altimeter with barometric data--which I'm not convinced is all that accurate, since I actually know the elevation of my house within a few feet and it was initially reading about 100 ft too low, now it is reading about 30 feet too high. The other part of the weight could be the better battery, a main reason I have for buying this watch, plus it also has a temperature sensor, which is kind of nice. It's not so much bigger that it's unwieldy for me, but I do notice it.
Battery life: 16 hours in standard 1 second GPS accuracy mode, meaning it takes a reading on your position every second, making for good accuracy on distance and pace. 25 hours in 5 second mode, which is still probably pretty accurate. 50 hours in 1 minute mode, which means that unless you are running in a straight line, you will lose some distance, perhaps a lot. This is sooo much better than the ~6 hours with the Garmin 610. The 610 may not even make it through a mountain 50K, and I'd never get it through a 50 miler. I can use the Ambit2 for any race, and I won't have to charge it so often during training. Huge advantage for the Ambit.
GPS acquisition is incredibly quick, so far within 5 seconds every time. Much better than my Garmin, which could easily take over a minute, even if starting from the same place I started and finished the last run. Not a really big deal, until you're that guy who doesn't want a group run to start until his watch acquires GPS, or are in a panic as a race is about to start and you still don't have a signal.
Cable connection: The clamp looks better than anything Garmin has come up with. A big complaint I've had with Garmin over the years is that it gets increasingly difficult to connect the watch due to some flaw in the design. It's really bad to set your watch to recharge the night before a big race or long training run, only to find it didn't stay connected and is at 10%. Time will tell how the Ambit2 holds up. I was initially frustrated until I learned that you have to have the watch in the basic mode for it to connect. If you've gone down into an activity or other menu, it won't connect until you back out. Not intuitive.
Buttons: lots of buttons, 5, too many to be intuitive. I'm getting the hang of them, but there are functions you have to press and hold that I still have to refer to the manual on. I guess with more functions you need more buttons, but really, I could do with fewer functions and more usability. Part of it is that the 610 had a swipe function to do things like switch screens to replace buttons. I liked the idea but it wasn't totally reliable, and I'd really get frustrated with the sensitivity when I was trying to scroll through menus to change options or view history. Not really missing the swipe function, but all them buttons is bamboozling me.
Customization: you have to do a lot of it with an online app, that you can only do with the watch connected to the PC. It's nice to be able to do this on a larger screen than the watch, but the drawback is that if I get to a race and remember that I want some kind of special setting, I won't be able to do it on the fly. There are a few things you can customize on the watch as well, but I don't think too much. For example, on a 100 miler I certainly can't use 1s mode for GPS accuracy, and ideally I'd like to be able to switch from 5s mode to 1m mode if I'm not going to finish in 24 hours. I better not have forgotten to switch to 5s mode before the race, and if I'm running low on battery it'd be nice to bump it to 1m on the fly, but I don't think I can.
Watch display: You get 3 fields, and can toggle the watch through up to 8 combinations. Unfortunately for my aging eyes, I can't read the top and bottom ones well as they are much smaller. But I need at least +2 readers, and really +2.50, so my eyes are bad. For younger eyes, this is a non-issue. You can show just 2 fields, but rather than splitting the screen equally, the 2nd field is still small. This is really bad for me, and much worse than the 610. I really like to see 3 fields: Current pace, distance, and elapsed time. What I've done is create 3 different sets with each of these as the middle (large) field, and I'll scroll through them as needed. I really don't want to be doing this while racing. Huge strike against the Ambit for me.
Other shortcomings:
Current pace only shows increments of 5 seconds, which means that it will show 8:00 min/mile pace, or 8:05 min/mile, but not 8:02. I know current pace can be a bit off, but I've found on most Garmins that it's usually pretty close. They don't even say how they round (up, down, nearest :05?) so 8:00 pace display may actually be anywhere from 7:56 to 8:04. That's as much as a 3.5 minute difference in a marathon. Probably not a huge deal, but it seems like a ridiculous limitation.
No vibrate function. I really like how my 610 can be set to vibrate every mile so that I'll look down to check my mile split time. The Ambit2 can be set to beep, but I can't even hear it with headphones on, and it might be tough in traffic.
Autolap: Each mile (changeable, kind of), the watch can be set to beep and display the time of the last lap completed. Unfortunately it shows the time in the small bottom field. The large middle field gets the lap number, so I see a huge 1 after the first mile but can't read what I really want to see, which is what my mile split was. For all the things you can customize on this watch, this doesn't seem to be one that can be changed, and they chose the wrong field to display predominately, in my opinion. Also, I'd like to set autolap to 1.01 miles, to reflect the reality that I usually come in around 26.4-26.5 miles in a marathon, due to not being able to run perfect tangents, weaving around people, and slight GPS inaccuracies. My 610 was functionally no better at .05 mile intervals, which means that 1.00 miles was still the closest I can get. I had older, less expensive Garmins give me that .01 granularity, and it would be nice to have that back.
Setup: With windows 8.1, I had to run setup as administrator to get it to work. Otherwise the watch would not connect with my laptop. It would just keep beeping every few seconds like it was connecting and disconnecting. I had to google the symptoms to figure this out. Before that I was nearly ready to throw the watch back in the box and ship it back.
No wireless connection. My Garmin 610 would transfer data wirelessly with a USB ANT stick. To get something similar (better) you have to spring for the Ambit3 with Bluetooth. Decide for yourself if that's worth it. Obviously I didn't, but it would be nice to have. Bluetooth, including being able to see texts and emails on your watch (if your eyes are better than mine) plus a slight weight reduction are about all I see different in the Ambit3, but check closer for yourself as other features that I don't care about may differ.
Here's a real nit, the Suunto site to download runs to and configure the watch from is called "Movescount". Activities are called "Moves". What an odd, stupid term. Sounds like dancing. Or BMs. I go out on runs, not "moves". Fortunately I just pass through Movescount automatically to Strava and don't have to look at my "moves" on their site, though I can't miss it when I go to that site to customize my watch.
Summary: Due to the lighter weight and especially the readability of all fields, plus the vibrate function, I'll keep using the 610 for marathons and shorter races as long as it seems reliable. The Ambit2 will be for ultra marathons, and probably most training, unless I'm doing a speed workout where I really like to track pace closely. I guess I'll have to run another 100 to justify this purchase basically for the longer battery life. ;-) I have to say I'm a bit disappointed in the Ambit's shortcomings. I'm glad my Garmin recovered and I don't have to rely on the Ambit for all races. I've probably got a good, though pricey, combination in the 2 watches now, but I'd really like a single watch that does it all for me. As I've said, for those of you with better eyes, my biggest issue is really no issue to you, which leaves the Ambit2 as a great watch for the price. Older folks like me might want to borrow somebody's first to see it for themselves. I feel like I asked the right questions of people on functions, and they gave accurate answers, but what I failed to find out was if it could do such-and-such function, and will I actually be able to see that?
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